While I was asleep, apparently the site was hacked. Luckily, (big) part of the lemmy.world team is in US, and some early birds in EU also helped mitigate this.

As I am told, this was the issue:

  • There is an vulnerability which was exploited
  • Several people had their JWT cookies leaked, including at least one admin
  • Attackers started changing site settings and posting fake announcements etc

Our mitigations:

  • We removed the vulnerability
  • Deleted all comments and private messages that contained the exploit
  • Rotated JWT secret which invalidated all existing cookies

The vulnerability will be fixed by the Lemmy devs.

Details of the vulnerability are here

Many thanks for all that helped, and sorry for any inconvenience caused!

Update While we believe the admins accounts were what they were after, it could be that other users accounts were compromised. Your cookie could have been ‘stolen’ and the hacker could have had access to your account, creating posts and comments under your name, and accessing/changing your settings (which shows your e-mail).

For this, you would have had to be using lemmy.world at that time, and load a page that had the vulnerability in it.

  • @vacuumflower
    0•1 year ago

    Debts get discharged all the time

    Yes, so?

    and they have no impact on inflation

    Measured by whom? Logically they should.

    It’s called the Bankruptcy System and it’s been a part of American economic reality since the mid-1800s.

    So in your idea of good economics it doesn’t matter for inflation if debt of NxM total gets discharged per month or of NxK total per month where K is much bigger than M?

    I just don’t get that pretentious acting.

    • @utopianfiat@lemmy.world
      1•1 year ago

      Logically they should.

      No, they shouldn’t. The money supply is unaffected by discharges.

      So in your idea of good economics it doesn’t matter for inflation if debt of NxM total gets discharged per month or of NxK total per month where K is much bigger than M?

      Discharge does introduce short-term shocks but it’s not the doomsday scenario you’re painting it to be. We did it in the 1800s and it was mostly fine compared to the regular bank panics before the greenback was adopted.

      • @vacuumflower
        2•1 year ago

        The money supply is unaffected by discharges.

        Ah, OK. Maybe “inflation” is the wrong word, but there’s a response. Insurance becomes more expensive, loans become more expensive, basically everybody for whom such an event is a risk reacts to its probability growing.

        but it’s not the doomsday scenario you’re painting it to be

        Well, I’m not saying it’s literally a doomsday scenario, just that it likely wouldn’t benefit the person dreaming about it more than it would harm them.

        • @DreadTowel@lemmy.world
          1•1 year ago

          Nono, inflation is the right word. Inflation isn’t caused by the money supply, but by supply vs demand. If demand suddenly increases, there will be inflation. If a lot of money is printed and is thrown in a hole, money supply will increase, but there’ll be no inflation.

          • @vacuumflower
            1•1 year ago

            Well, yes, I’m just always floating in economic terms, it really doesn’t help that people around often have differing ideas on what these mean.

            Only decreases (if we are speaking about demand for money, not demand for commodity bought with it), not increases, but I think it’s an error, not a mistake. =\